About Me

Blog Archive

Search This Blog

Sunday, September 25, 2016

`Only a Woman's Hair'

“Lo here I
sit at Holyhead

With muddy
ale and mouldy bread

All
Christian victuals stink of fish

I’m where
my enemies would wish . . .”

Like
photography and marksmanship, the art of invective relies on focus and strict
recognition of existing conditions. Otherwise, it’s mere rant, a formless
tantrum in words. Passion is less than half the job. The rest is “proper words
in proper places,” as Swift wrote elsewhere. The poem excerpted above,
“Holyhead. September 25, 1727,” was written in his journal and not published
until 1882. Swift arrived at Holyhead on
Sept. 24 but stormy weather kept him from traveling for five days. On Sept. 29,
his ferry set sail but returned to Holyhead because of rough seas. He didn’t
ship out until Oct. 1, and weather again delayed him. Swift came ashore in
County Louth, some seventy miles from Dublin, and reached the city on Oct. 6 or
7:

“I never
was in haste before

To reach
that slavish hateful shore

Before, I
always found the wind

To me was
most malicious kind

But now, the
danger of a friend

On whom my
fears and hopes depend

Absent
from whom all climes are curst

With whom
I'm happy in the worst

With rage
impatient makes me wait

A passage
to the land I hate.”

The
“friend” is Esther Johnson, better known as “Stella,” to whom he addressed his Journal to Stella. Swift prayed at her
bedside and composed prayers for her, but couldn’t stand to be present at her
death, on Jan. 28, 1728. In another poem from his Holyhead journal, Swift
writes of Ireland:

“Remove me
from this land of slaves,

Where all
are fools and all are knaves;

Where
every knave and fool is bought,

Yet kindly
sells himself for naught;

Where Whig
and Tory fiercely fight,

Who’s in
the wrong, who in the right;

And when
their country lies at stake,

They only
fight for fighting’s sake,

While
English sharpers take the pay,

And then
stand by to see fair play.”

Few
writers could so combine political invective with the outlines of a love
letter. Thackeray writes in his essay on Swift:

“In a note
in his biography, Scott says that his friend Dr. Tuke of Dublin has a lock of
Stella’s hair, enclosed in a paper by Swift, on which are written, in the
Dean’s hand, the words: `Only a woman’s hair.’ An instance, says Scott, of the
Dean’s desire to veil his feelings under the mask of cynical indifference.”

[“`Jonathan Swift’ is the only Fast Ferry on the Irish Sea route taking you across in just 1 hour 49 mins!”]

1 comment:

Thanks for the reference to the ferry, which I had not known about. It must be difficult for the Irish to celebrate the work of a writer who was so critical of the land of his birth, but I suppose the word-play on Swift was irresistible to the board of Irish Ferries. A fine example of commerce coming to the aid of literature, and vice-versa!